Brilliant New Windows Phone Video Takes on Lapsed iPhone Innovation

Remember when the iPhone was truly innovative? Think hard, because you'd have to go back to 2007, and the release of the first iPhone. But since then, Apple has been tossing out retread after retread, and this year's iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S represent a curious creative nadir for the firm. A new Windows Phone video shows how hard Apple must have worked to come up with these turds. Hint: Not that hard.

A "brilliant" video? Perhaps you've been using windows phone for so long that you've forgotten what brilliance is. Seriously though, I cracked a smile when they brought in the Jony double but that's about it. It doesn't come close to the recent Lumia 1020 recital ad. It's just two minutes of "hey the iPhone comes in different colors now, ha ha ha ha."

Playing the idea man in this video is none other than Seattle's biggest microcelebrity, Luke Burbank, who is a semi-regular guest on NPRs "Wait, Wait... don't tell me!" show, and his own "Too Beautiful to Live" podcast. Which is occasionally sponsored by Bing.

The inside scoop, however, is that Luke is a confirmed iPhone user. Talks about it quite a bit on his podcast - like the time he lost his in Vegas and took a taxi to the outskirts of town to confront the "thief" only to find himself a victim of Apple's 'find my phone' glitch! Comedy Gold!

Now if MS only could get Luke to actually try, perhaps even use, a Windows phone and talk about it on his podcast. I think a little loyalty to the hometown software giant would go a long way. That's what the Tens of listeners to his podcast would want. Probably.

So is the 64-bit CPU as useless as it seems? I thought the only thing useful about 64-bit was that it gave you memory addresses above 4GB. The Iphone 5s is in the 1-2 GB range. So this seems like Atari Jaguar type marketing.

Yes, 64 bit CPUs are useless without 4B of RAM. That is why all those high end 64 bit Unix workstations in the 1990s, SGI, Sun, etc. were useless and nobody used them for anything serious. It was all just a marketing ploy.

There are many applications that will benefit from the transition to 64bit where larger numbers and chunks of data can be processed more efficiently than 32bit ones.

Well, it does increase efficiency, but not very noticable on mobile (light) applications. The move to 64-bits is not completely marketing, as note3 already have 3gb of ram, so it might be possible that 3-4 years from now, majority of android phone will need more than 4gb of ram to run smoothly, while same cannot be speak of the ios or wp platform as they all have different (in sense of unlike PC and android) way to manage background application, it is not hard to imagine that most ram demanding actions people perform on phones like browsing web and gaming will demand more ram in 5 years of time. Its nice to start the transition now, so your ecosystem of apps will be ready when demand comes. Games also benefit from the efficiency of a 64bit processor, so at least ip5s owner can be benefit from that.

September 23rd. The day that iPhone 5c outsells all Windows phone 7/8 phones combined. Same for the 5s.

Microsoft's "message" is so UNCLEAR right now its crazy. The look like a company in extreme turmoil. The Nokia purchase screams desperation for fear some Android vendor would buy them and kill Windows Phone once and for all. Weekly changes to the Xbox One product. People jumping ship left and right. Re-org then the CEO quits?? ValueAct whispering things like "sell off Xbox" and other stuff that actually makes sense from a shareholders perspective.

Ford dwarfs Ferrari in sales but nobody can say it makes a better car.

This glass can be seen as half full or half empty and you are choosing the latter. MS HAS to make their mobile OSs successful. It is the future of computing and they well know it. The re-org makes perfect sense and is overdue. MS has both immense funds and talent. They well know the peril that exists for them. They may be slow be they ain't stupid. All of this negativity can be turned around with the right leadership and consistent execution.

Brilliant? It's absolutely embarrassing. Out of all the fun they could of had they managed to produce something humorless and painful to watch. And since when did the gray haired Tim Cook look more like an emancipated Steve Jobs. Looks like it's already been pulled and good riddance to it.

If we're going to mention that, let's tell the truth. It has nothing to do with the humor, which is spot on. It's because "Tim Cook" looks too much like Steve Jobs. That's all. This thing is fricking hilarious.

But yeah, the new iPhones really are boring. It's nice they finally got on the colour band wagon (No idea why they dropped it in the first place, I used to love that you could buy different coloured iPods, seemed natural to have coloured iPhones years ago) but lack of replaceable shells is a shame, though Nokia have done the same for their flagship phones annoyingly.

As for the gold, ew! If it doesn't even look good in the render...

One of my friends said how excited he is for the fingerprint ID and, I quote, "awesome new camera". Sigh...

I don't get it, in what sense is it a joke? Is it a joke because it is last year's high-end phone in a plastic shell, i. e. a mid-range phone by today's standards? I'm pretty sure it'll sell very, very well. By making last year's high-end phone the center of attention, they can establish a mid-range model that (to consumers) doesn't feel like »last year's phone«. This way, they have an easier way to trickle down technology that is initially not available in volume.

From a business perspective, this makes sense to me -- even though I personally wouldn't want to buy a 5c.

Yah. Snark is great fun, but does it sell anything? The "I'm a Mac' ads succeeded because:

1. They were funny, which this isn't.

2. Fair or not, there was an existing belief that Vista was bad, and Apple just fanned the flames. In the great wide world, there is -no- such belief that there's anything wrong with the iPhone, and certainly no widespread belief that Windows Phone is the "answer" to whatever's wrong with the iPhone.

Microsoft should approach this differently, somewhat like the Surface commercials, those show that the Microsoft product does things that the Apple one does not. This spot won't do anything for their product, and I bet that's why they pulled it.

That isn't entirely fair--the iPhone 4 when it came out in mid 2010 was to most people the most strikingly beautiful mobile device ever produced. Antenna issues aside, it was pretty mindblowing and a definite innovation from previous models. Unfortunately for Apple, the results since then have been much less impressive.

As a consumer (and full-time WP user) though, I have to say I hate when I see brands put time/money into hater / takedown messages.

I don't get this, I don't like any company be be the bully of the "tech world". I feeled ashamed as a sharehold of microsoft for they did not step in in time to defend its customers' image when the Mac vs. Pc commercials hit TV. And I feeled ashamed as a windows/wp user for them to make this nonsense. Let go back to the win tablet vs. ipad, and why fight, switch commercials and actually show the world the great things Microsoft has to offer.

Don't be the bully, we (the users, the company, and you, Paul) are better and more mature than that.

PS. It's very unclear what they try to achieve here as the make all the jokes about plastic on phone. I have nothing against plastic, but it is worth to mention that the only WP on the market that has a none plastic body is the Lumia 925, both the flagship and most popular WPs are all plastic.

Curiosly, thevApple blogs I have been following tout Apple is indeed innovating on the iPhone, but not on plastic or finger print scanners, but on photography, "extending their lead as the top performing mobile phone camera, ready to replace even DSLR's very very soon." I wonder why the iPhone camera is now getting so much attention, when they did not even do anything interesting on it.

I love Paul. I love his quick wit, his dry sense of humor and his sarcasm. But I had to comment because...wow..this is not brilliant. It's really bad. For the general public who doesn't know or care about Windows Phone this doesn't change that. And Paul weighing in that the new iPhones are turds is baffling. They haven't made a Windows Phone yet that would get me to switch and I had all the Zunes! (That may reflect poorly on my judgement). I will be plunking down $300 for a brilliantly crafted and polished turd I guess. You could give me a 1020 and I would have no appetite to use it for two years. There is a reason we'll pay just about anything. I'm assuming MSFT would love to have customers like that. They are killing me lately. Windows 8 (I bought an iMac after upgrading my desktop from 7), Windows Phone (we have apps that are really similar to yours but not nearly as good!), Xbox One (I pre-ordered a PS4). What are they going to do to earn my business back? I wasn't loyal enough to suffer through this nonsense anymore. .

Humor is of course subjective. I think this is brilliant for logic, obvious reasons: This is exactly the BS stuff that Apple put into the iPhone 5C and 5S and they're celebrated for it. It's just amazing to me.

Microsoft's problems are Microsoft's problems. This video is about the iPhone.

You are about the only one who thinks it was brilliant. It was painful to watch because it wasn't funny at all. It was also in bad taste to use someone to represent Tim Cook who actually looks like an emaciated Steve Jobs from behind. I guess that is why Microsoft also decided it wasn't brilliant and pulled it.

Not the only one. The people who don't like this are either humorless or overly-sensitive, in the latter case often (but not always) because they can't stand any humor that cuts this close to the truth, especially about Apple. Which, by the way, is absolutely not above this kind of well-deserved mocking.

I agree that there is nothing innovative about the 5C, its a repackaged 5 in a colored plastic shell. But that is something that many consumers seem to want.

However, there are some nice new features in the 5S which are innovative and have the potential for a large impact in the smartphone market.

An integrated fingerprint scanner which is also part of the OS and ecosystem could be huge, as well as the shift to 64 bit for improved software performance in many video and photo apps, as well as security.

Just for the record: I like Apple software because I feel like it is better quality and "just works." I find the iPad versus Windows 8 tablet ads to be really good and have a really good sense of humor. They are funny. I think the Windows 8 'Samsung vs Apple" ads are funny. I know this wasn't meant to be an "ad", but it was just terrible.

I think your statement is an over-generalization. I didn't find the ad funny and I'm not humorless or sensitive about the subject matter. In fact, I think it's quite correct. I even posted some links to some other parody ads that I think are funnier.

However, I do think that part of my dislike for these ads is that Microsoft made them. As much as I love Microsoft and am rooting for their success, I think they need to get their own act together before they start pointing the finger at other folks.

This ad just makes them look desparate and class-less, which is a shame because it's pretty much true After all, Apple is the one that's pushing the same crap in different packaging. I believe 'lipstick on a pig' is the phrase you used.

Microsoft just can't get anything right lately can they? Windows 8 is still in backlash Hell. Windows Phone is barely there & only by virtue of it's nearest competition being so bad, that being Blackberry, is WP8 even in the discussion. Surface is an official flop & even Microsoft had to admit it. Now they buy Nokia who was seemingly either going to go with Android or exit the phone market entirely according to most knowledgeable reporting. Yeah good one again Microsoft.

Ballmer may have been one of the good guys, as you said on Windows Weekly to Leo a few weeks ago Paul. But there is no doubt his lack of vision as a CEO has left Microsoft rudderless. They pulled these ads in less than a day because everybody gave them shit for it being in poor taste. Rightfully so by the way.

Can we get a Steve Jobs like CEO to rouse the troops & save Microsoft from itself please instead of mocking a dead guy? We windows users desperately want to see Microsoft relevant again. Stephen Elop isn't the answer & neither are ads like this.